S: Sexual self-discovery is a recurring motif in your work from
26 Miles to Daphne’s Dive. Where does this thematic interest
come from?
QAH: Sexuality is one of the great themes, along with
love, suffering, forgiveness, death. How could a writer
not engage it? Male playwrights engage it with impunity,
and I happily do the same.
I am a child of the AIDS epidemic. I was coming of age at
a time when entire communities were dropping like flies.
It was terrifying. Part of the way I combatted the loss I felt
within my own particular community in Philly was by being
a peer educator in high school. I was the condom girl.
I trained classmates to go teach sex ed. My mother had
worked as an advocate for women’s health and reproductive rights as well, so for me sexuality is tied up with issues
of class and education. But mostly, it’s just a delicious,
meaty subject.
S: You originally trained as a musician at Yale. What role does
music play in Daphne’s Dive?
QAH: I’m thrilled to have Michel Camilo as the composer for
this project. I wrote the entire play listening to his music. There
is something particular about how he marries virtuosity and
joy. As I imagined these folks in a bar, I suspected they are also
attempting to become virtuosic at joy, through spinning yarns
and telling a good damn joke.
Sexuality is one of the great themes, along
with love, suffering, forgiveness, death.
How could a writer not engage it?
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